Wednesday, October 23, 2013

ARAB IMMIGRANT TO USA FACES CHARGES IN 1969 JERUSALEM TERROR ATTACK

An Arab-American community activist from the Chicago suburbs was arrested Tuesday on immigration charges for allegedly lying about her conviction for a deadly bombing more than 40 years ago in Israel.

Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 66, spent a decade in an Israeli prison for her involvement in a 1969 attack that involved bombs planted at a crowded Jerusalem supermarket and a British consulate, according to a federal indictment. Only one bomb — one of two placed at the supermarket — exploded, killing the two people and wounding several others. Israeli authorities have said the attacks were planned by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

An Israeli military court sentenced Odeh to life in prison in 1970, but she was released 10 years later in a prisoner exchange with the Popular Front. Israel released 76 prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon, according to Odeh’s indictment.

But US authorities accuse Odeh of failing to mention her conviction and time in prison on immigration papers when she came to the US from Jordan in 1995 and before she became a naturalized US citizen in 2004, the indictment says.

It sounds like she was an early example of terrorists being released for exchanges that are dangerous to perform, and at the time the Begin government was in charge. That was a most embarrassing act of stupidity, which only precipitates the mindset of jihadists who kidnap infidels for ransom. Odeh should be sent right back to prison where she belongs.